Going down in the ratings, Bush has to scramble to save even a thread of modesty as the emperor is revealed naked, writes Mohamed Hakki The swift withdrawal of President George Bush's Supreme Court nominee allowed him to change course amid controversy and find another candidate. Can he do the same in the case of the scandal of having Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff indicted to save his own reputation? Can he reverse the tide of his fast-slipping approval rating -- because of the war in Iraq -- that now stands at 38 per cent? Can he save the American people further humiliation? I asked a friend of mine, a former high-ranking State Department diplomat, "why is it that commentators started their reports on last week's events by saying it is the saddest and darkest day in Bush's presidency?" He said, "because the American people do not like to see the president so humiliated publicly". Yes, Bush has many problems: the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the failure of his economic policies, the failure of social security reform. But almost everyone ties the drop in the polls to the war in Iraq and the rise in the number of American casualties there. Can Bush reverse the tide? General William Odum, who himself was a candidate to be national security advisor to Bush in the first term but who was eliminated by the same culprits responsible for the latest scandal in Washington, offered some suggestions in a speech delivered to the Academy of Diplomacy last week. His question was, "what's wrong with cutting and running?" General Odum has never minced words or been afraid of airing his opinions candidly. He made several points but I will cite only a few. The war logic: Odum says we created the civil war in Iraq when we invaded and we cannot prevent civil war by staying. On credibility: a hyper power need not worry about credibility. We have made a major strategic mistake; we can reverse it. It may even enhance our credibility. Staying damages our credibility more than leaving. On insurgency and democracy: there is no question that the insurgents and other anti-American parties will take over the government once the US leaves. But that will happen no matter how long we stay. Any government capable of holding power in Iraq will be anti-American because the Iraqi people are increasingly anti-American. On terrorists: Iraq is already a training ground for terrorists. Why not ask, "Mr president, you and the vice- president insist that Saddam's Iraq supported Al-Qaeda, which we now know it did not. Isn't your policy in Iraq today strengthening Al-Qaeda's position in that country?" On Iran: Iranian leaders see US policy as serving Tehran's interests; they have been advising Iraqi Shia leaders to do exactly what the Americans are asking them to do. Elections will allow the Shia to take power legally. Once in charge they can settle scores with the Baathists and the Sunnis. Odum asked several questions about Iraq's neighbours, the Shia-Sunni conflict and the training of Iraqi military and police. He says the insurgents are fighting very effectively, without American or European military advisors to train them. So why don't the soldiers and police in the present Iraqi regime's service do as well? General Odum wonders about the lack of debate about an early pullout. He says that many officers in Iraq -- especially at company levels -- know that while they are winning every tactical battle, they are losing strategically. He says that it is noteworthy that US generals are not bubbling over with optimistic reports the way they were during the first few years of the war in Vietnam. Their careful statements and caution probably reflect serious doubts that they do not and should not express publicly. But how about those ideologues in the administration who started the war? What can Bush do to restore confidence in his administration? Juan Cole, professor of Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan, who is admittedly not a friend of the administration, says in an article posted on salon.com, "most of the members of Vice-President Cheney's inner circle were neo-conservative ideologues who combined hawkish American triumphalism with an obsession with Israel. This does not mean that the war was fought for Israel, although it is understandable that Israeli concerns played an important role. The actual motivation behind the war was complex, and Cheney's team was not the only one in the game. The Bush administration is a coalition of disparate forces, country club Republicans, realists, representatives of oil and other corporate interests, evangelicals, and hardball political strategists, rightwing Catholics, and neo-conservative Jews allied with Israel's Likud Party. Each group had its own rational for going to war with Iraq." So what is to become of this clique or cabal, if Bush wants to steer his ship of state away from those who caused this scandal? According to Saul Landau, fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, "Bush may have privately reprimanded Karl Rove, but the prosecutor kept bringing back Rove and L Scooter Libby to the Grand Jury. Rumours began to circulate that Cheney might resign because witnesses would implicate him in the leak scandal." I heard the same thing from several sources; which is, if Bush wants to sweep all the conspirators out, Cheney may have to resign. This is his group and he protects them all. In a recent article in the American Conservative Magazine, Philip Giraldi tried to identify those who did most to falsify the case for war. He says that preliminary information dug up by Italian investigators indicates that key documents were produced in Italy with the connivance of the Italian Intelligence Service. The Office of Special Plans, via Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, then introduced them into the American intelligence stream. This information was included in a dossier "from the Italian intelligence" indicating that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Niger. The same intelligence was passed simultaneously to Britain's MI6, though the Italian information was inconclusive an old, some parts dating from the 1980s. The British, the CIA, and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research analysed the intelligence and dismissed it. Enter Michael Ladeen, the Office of Special Plans' man in Rome, who had access to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley, and passed it on to them. Ladeen was also a confidant of Cheney. Thus he was able to circumvent the obstruction coming from the CIA and State Department. Finally, on 28 January 2003, over the objections of CIA and State Department, the famous 16 words about Niger's uranium were inserted into the president's state of the union address, in an effort to justify the coming attack on Iraq. President Bush soon stopped referring to the Niger uranium, but Cheney continued to insist that Iraq was seeking nuclear weapons. It has now become clear that Italian intelligence and the US Office of Special Plans fabricated documents taken as evidence. The Italian man who staged the forgery, Rocco Martino, later admitted to The Financial Times that both the Italian and American governments were behind the fabrication of the full Niger dossier, as part of a disinformation operation. The rest, as they say, is history. The real heroes, however, remain Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame, who knew they were fighting Goliath -- the whole neo-con apparatus and the army of government supporters in the media -- but who never gave up. This, as yet, is only the first chapter in the story.
